


Father’s Day

by orphan_account



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Not Really Character Death, Responsibility, Warlord Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, ciri-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:28:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27038728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: She’s five the first time her father tries to explain to her that she’ll inherit his kingdom someday. "When I die," he starts, then takes one look at her face, her big shining eyes and horrified expression, swears, and gives up.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Eskel, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Jaskier | Dandelion, Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 24
Kudos: 467





	Father’s Day

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [With a Conquering Air](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23273713) by [inexplicifics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics). 



> felt cute might orphan later

Ciri’s fifteen when the war with Nilfgaard starts. She’s fifteen when the White Wolf commits his forces to Cintra, fifteen when her father and her Uncle Eskel ride off at the head of an army. Fifteen when Jaskier collapses during dinner in the great hall, when the raven flaps in with word of the Battle of Sodden: that the battle is won, but that Geralt of Rivia, Warlord of the North, King of Kaedwen, Lord Regent of Caingorn, is lost.

Yen catches Jaskier before he can fall from his chair. The rest of the hall--every set of golden eyes in the place--turns to Ciri.

She feels paralyzed. She feels numb, as if she’s vacated her body, and she’s not sure that she’s fully processed yet, what the message that Vesemir just read actually means, because she knows if she had she wouldn’t be this composed. She’d be screaming, probably. Tearing at her doublet, throwing her plate across the table, pulling her own hair out.

But she isn’t. She’s just sitting, like someone ran a sword down her spine to keep her upright, not saying anything.

Finally she notices that Yen is trying to get her attention, motioning for Ciri to stand. Ciri does, mechanically and too fast, so that her chair would tip over if Vesemir didn’t reach out to steady it. She looks out over the hall, more than a hundred of the world’s finest warriors looking to her for guidance, and she doesn’t have anything. She opens her mouth to say--who the hell knows--but Vesemir saves her.

“White Wolf,” he says gruffly.

It’s not very loud, but it’s loud enough for Witcher ears.

“White Wolf,” someone echoes further down the Wolf table. Then a moment of silence, then a few men from the Bear table bark out the same. Ciri flinches at the volume, but then the whole hall is repeating it, pledging their allegiance-- _White Wolf, White Wolf_ \--and Ciri feels the weight of their voices building, the weight of their faith and the responsibility that’s landed square on her shoulders.

The hall rings with quiet as the chant ends.

Somehow Ciri manages to do what her father always does: she nods once and sits. Under the table, her hands are shaking so bad she’s worried it’s moving her shoulders.

*

She’s five the first time her father tries to explain to her that she’ll inherit his kingdom one day. _When I die,_ he starts, and then takes one look at her face, her big shining eyes and terrified expression, and swears, and gives up.

He tries again when she’s eight. _One day I’ll be gone,_ he says, _and you’ll have to be in charge of the kingdom_.

She climbs up in his lap--Yen’s started making noises lately about her being too big to be carried around, but her father doesn’t mind it, and the castle’s full of Witchers who could lift a horse and don’t mind being treated like climbing frames, so she’s fighting a losing battle.

 _Like to the market?_ she asks, and Geralt huffs.

 _No, cub,_ he says. _Gone forever. You remember when we talked about how your mother is gone forever? How that happens to everyone eventually?_

Ciri feels her lower lip wobble, but she bites it to keep it still. She’s getting very good at not crying, at being a big girl. _Yes,_ she says.

 _It won’t be soon,_ Geralt assures her. _But someday. When you’re older. When you’re ready. It will be your job to look after the Witchers, and the kingdom._

 _Can’t Auntie Yen do it?_ Ciri asks.

Her father huffs. _I’m sure she would like that. And she’ll help you, if she can. But it’s got to be you, cub. You were born to rule. It’s your destiny._

_*_

Ciri and Yennefer accompany Jaskier back to the White Wolf’s quarters. He’s unconscious still, carried by Lambert and Aubry, and they’ve sent for Triss, but by the time they lay him down in bed he’s already stirring, mumbling nonsense to himself.

The oddest part is that he passed out _before_ the raven arrived. Just moments before, yes, but it’s not as if he heard the news that his beloved was... was...

 _Dead_ , Ciri forces herself to think, like pulling out a splinter, only she feels much worse once she’s done it. She swallows down the lump in her throat and sits on Jaskier’s bedside, taking his hand in hers just for something to do while Yen paces around spitting curses and they all wait for Triss. Jaskier’s eyelids flutter, but the lines around his eyes seem much deeper than they had this morning, and that can’t be good. It can’t be. Ciri pushes his hair out of his face, shocked by how cold his skin is. There are a few gray hairs in with the brown, now. She can’t see them but she knows. He found the first one a few weeks ago while he was teaching her geography in her solar, and swore her to secrecy on the matter.

He murmurs something that sounds like _Geralt._ She clutches tight to his hand. It’s calloused from the strings of his lute, fingers covered in rings, fine-boned. _Noble’s hands_ , her father used to tease, back when they were first courting, and Jaskier would lower his voice to retort with something she wasn’t supposed to hear. Jaskier is as much a father to her as Geralt, and she thinks that the only reason she hasn’t already given out at the knees is that she can still feel his pulse under her fingers.

Triss comes. She shoos Ciri and Yen over to the window, where Yen continues to pace and Ciri stands stock still, arms crossed over her chest, floating far away.

“It’s the life bond,” Triss declares, after some minutes. “The one we put in when Jaskier was--“

“When he was stabbed,” Yen cuts in.

“Yes.” Triss looks grim. Even her hair looks flatter, like it’s sick. “Life force leaking the wrong way, now. Well--the other way.”

“Into Geralt,” Yen says.

“That could save him,” Ciri blurts. Her heart feels like it’s beating a million miles an hour, now, when a second ago it was stone. “That could--if it’s feeding him life force--“

“It could, if he’s only wounded,” Triss admits. “If he’s… I’m sorry, highness, but if he’s dead then all the bond is going to do is drain Jaskier until he’s dead as well.”

 _No,_ Ciri thinks desperately. _Not him as well._

“What--“ she starts to ask, but there’s a knock on the door.

Vesemir steps inside. He takes in Jaskier on the bed, Yen and Triss looking like they’re at a funeral, and Ciri with her shoulders hunched by the window, but he doesn’t comment. “White Wolf,” he says to Ciri. “You’re needed urgently in the war room.”

*

Ciri starts dressing like Jaskier after they attend an Elven summer festival in Aedirn. Colorful doublets, breeches, ribbons in her hair. _Enjoying the finer things_ , Jaskier calls it, smiling his approval, but no one else seems quite so happy. Yen can’t decide whether she’s more miffed by the breeches or happy about the ribbons, since it’s her duty to make Ciri appear as a young lady befitting her status; Geralt’s worried about things like range of motion and people tugging on her ribbons in a fight and where she’s going to hide a knife without skirts.

 _Why do I have to hide it?_ she asks, when he brings that up. _None of the other Witchers hide their knives. Can’t I just wear them on my belt?_

Her father sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

It falls to Yennefer to explain to Ciri the concept of diplomatic subtlety--or, as she calls it, the fine art of smiling to their faces and stabbing them in the back.

This accompanies other such lessons as: Never Let Them See You Bleed, The Best Defense Is a Good Offense, and If They Call You a Bitch, You’re Doing Something Right. Which accompany combat training in the courtyard and etiquette with her lady in waiting and what Jaskier likes to call “Kingdoms & Their Customs” but is really just him dishing what he thinks is the most relevant gossip from every royal court. Which all accompany the rare days when she’s called upon to follow her father or Uncle Eskel or Vesemir around the Kaer for the day, so she can see what goes into the nitty-gritty of running a kingdom. Ciri mostly thinks it’s all very boring and would much rather spend her time trying to talk Yen into teaching her combat magic or scrapping with the initiates in the courtyard.

She takes it all for granted, is the thing--Jaskier laughing and twirling her around as they try on doublets in the market at Ard Carraigh, her father giving her a tired look and saying that he would really feel better if she would hide her knives in her skirts, Uncle Eskel letting her have his chair at meetings about grain stores and livestock so that she can see the map they’ve got spread out on the table. She takes for granted that when she goes to bed at night her mind is quiet and when she wakes up she’s safe and happy, and she wishes she could go back to those peaceful sunlit years, because if she could do them over again she thinks she would enjoy them more, pay more attention, be better.

*

Reconstruction negotiations are starting at Sodden, and Eskel has taken the Witcher army on a wild goose chase after the retreating Nilfgaardians.

He stops long enough to exchange a few terse sentences with Ciri and Vesemir via xenovox, but wherever he is it’s raining buckets and howling wind, so they can barely hear him. Vesemir tries to talk him into heading back for the negotiations--the Warlord has had a hand in ending the war, and has to have a hand in divvying up the spoils if he wants to be taken seriously as a ruler--but not even Ciri giving the order, voice thin and trembling, has any effect. Eskel tells them that he’s a day behind the Nilfgaardians and riding hard; he expects to catch up to them by daybreak.

 _They have his body,_ he says, ragged.

Neither Ciri nor Vesemir ask what he’s going to do with the Nilfgaardians when he catches them. Eskel has always been more than just Geralt’s right hand--he’s his brother, his bedmate, his partner in every sense of the word. Or rather, he _was_.

“What shall we do, highness?” Vesemir ventures, when the xenovox is quiet and they’re alone in the war room. “Negotiations start in the morning…”

“I think…” Ciri starts, then trails off. “I would value your counsel, Vesemir.”

The old wolf looks as if he’s aged a hundred years since this morning--human years, not Witcher years. His gaze is soft as he looks at her. As soft, at least, as Vesemir’s ever is. “If we do not participate, we will be seen as less than the other belligerents. It would be customary for the Wolf himself to attend, as he was on the battlefield. But given the circumstances, a representative should suffice.”

Ciri thinks about it, mind whirring. She thinks about every lesson she’s ever had on keeping up appearances, on being a strong leader.

“I’ll go,” she decides. “I’ll take Yen, and Lambert. You’ll hold the Kaer.”

She half-expects him to argue, like he did just yesterday when she said they ought to stockpile sweets instead of grain for the winter and tried to make it a “royal decree.” But instead he only inclines his head and agrees, “White Wolf.”

Ciri, in a show of confidence that she doesn’t feel, excuses herself into the king’s solar. She’s not really thinking about the fact that it’s _the king’s solar_ , just that it’s a private room that’s very close to the one she’s currently in, and that she needs to be alone before her knees give out--which they do, as soon as she’s across the threshold.

The door closes behind her back. She slides down until she’s sitting on the cold stone floor, legs folded up against her chest. Her eyes burn. She feels like there’s someone inside her head pressing at them, but she doesn’t let herself cry. There’s no time to cry.

That’s what she tells herself, over and over again: _There’s no time. There’s no time_.

Her father’s cloak is still hanging off the back of the chair in here, the lined one that he wears when the fire goes out and he can’t be bothered to stoke it. She’s curled up under that cloak too many times to count, small enough for Geralt to carry in one arm and nestled sleepily against his chest while he finished his paperwork, charging down the hall with it trailing on the floor behind her and soap suds in her hair screaming _Look at me, Uncle Eskel, I’m daddy!_ Without deciding to, she reaches for it. Her fingers just brush the fuzzy edges of the fur. She sits forward and grabs it properly, then pulls it down and around her shoulders, burying her face in the fabric. It smells like her father.

Tears well up in her eyes, and when she blinks they spill out onto her cheeks.

 _There’s no time_ , she tells herself, and squeezes her eyes shut, hard enough to stop the tears. She scrubs at her cheeks, furious with herself, with her weakness, with her father for dying and Jaskier for being ill and Eskel for not being here.

Then she clasps the cloak at her throat--it will still trail on the ground, but she’s the bloody White Wolf now, no one can tell her what to wear--and gets up.

*

“Does this mean that my father's alive?” she asks Triss, standing by Jaskier’s bed.

Triss shakes her head helplessly, dabbing Jaskier’s brow with a warm cloth. “I don’t know. It’s not exactly a popular spell, binding your life force to someone else’s. I think it’s been done two or three times in all of history. Geralt could be alive, and that’s why it’s drawing on Jaskier, or this could be how the spell reacts when one half dies.”

Ciri looks at Jaskier--her father, one of her fathers--gray and lifeless in bed. He doesn’t even seem to have the energy to shiver anymore. Ciri’s afraid that if she takes his hand it will feel like ice. “What’s going to happen if we leave him like this?”

“I don’t see how he could survive. If I don’t break the spell he won’t last the night.”

Ciri imagines Geralt laying mostly-dead on some muddy battlefield, blood gurgling up past his lips, golden eyes open to slits in the pitch dark of night. She imagines him cold and alone and afraid, his hands trembling as he tries to hold his guts in his body, clinging to this last chance at life, this last connection, his consort’s heart linked with his.

She sees Jaskier’s eyelashes flutter weakly beneath the cloth. He’d been about to sing when he collapsed, reaching for his lute. She knows if she could rouse him and ask him, he’d want her to leave the spell intact, leave him connected to Geralt, even if it meant he followed his beloved into the afterlife.

 _Not him as well_ , she thinks--not desperate, but resolved.

“Break it,” she tells Triss.

Triss nods. On a normal day she’s like an older sister to Ciri, someone who orders her around a bit while still feeling like someone Ciri can confide in, can be girlish with. This is not a normal day. Ciri wonders if she’ll ever have a normal day again. She leaves Triss in her father’s rooms, as the sorceress sets her cloth aside and begins to murmur deep magic.

*

Ciri is once--briefly, at the age of ten--kidnapped by Kaedwen separatists. They’re not very skillful kidnappers, and they get by mostly on luck, catching her in the market by chance when she slips her Witcher escort in a moment of childish rebellion. They stuff her in the back of a cart and have her halfway out of the city before Uncle Eskel and Lambert even realize she’s not in the fitting room at the dressmaker’s.

To Ciri the whole thing seems like a bit of a lark, a fun adventure--at least until one of them gets fed up with her happy singing and calls her a _spoiled little cunt_ and holds a dagger to her throat. His friends pull him off quickly enough, but the damage is done. Ciri falls silent as the dead, her knees clutched tight to her chest, fear roiling in her throat.

The Witchers catch up to them in fifteen minutes.

Eskel’s the one to rip the door off the cart, to plunge his sword in to the heart of the last kidnapper. He’s the one to take Ciri in his arms, holding her tight to his chest while she buries her face in his neck, shaking with terrified sobs. He’s the one to stroke her hair and murmur, _I’m sorry, cub. I’m sorry you had to see that, I’m sorry we lost you, it’s alright now, I’ve got you. I’ve got you, cub. You’re safe._

Ciri spends the night curled up in a tight ball in her father and Jaskier’s bed, but she insists that Uncle Eskel stay as well. He props himself up with some pillows at the foot of the bed, hand on his sword. Ciri wakes twice with nightmares, once so frightened that she wets the bed, which only makes her cry harder than before, and while Jaskier helps her change her nightshirt and holds her in the rocking chair until she calms down, Eskel and her father get up and change the sheets. Eskel doesn’t complain, he doesn’t grumble, he doesn’t go sleep in his own bed, which hasn’t been peed in and isn’t in danger of being so. When they climb back into bed Geralt leaves him room on the pillow, and Eskel lifts his arm so that Ciri can burrow into his side. She sleeps through peacefully until dawn.

At age fifteen Ciri will remember that night, remember how safe she felt.

She supposes everyone loses it eventually: the safety of having someone to hide behind, the safety of fathers. She just hopes she doesn’t lose all three parents in a single day.

*

Daybreak. A light breeze, and smoke. Ciri stands on the battlefield at Sodden, in the burning remains of thousands of dead, and thinks it all feels like a joke. This can’t be what’s actually happened, can it? There must be some sort of mistake, right?

“Ciri,” Lambert says, behind her. At least he’s not calling her _White Wolf_ or _highness_ , like everyone else. “I think they want everyone in the tent.”

Geralt’s cloak flaps around her ankles. It nearly brushes the ground, even with the pins that she put in the hem. She stares out at Sodden Hill for another moment, as if looking at the aftermath will give her some insight into the battle itself. Then she nods and turns to follow Lambert inside.

The Kings of Redania and Aedirn are both in attendance, as is the Queen of Cintra. No one from Nilfgaard is here; there is no one left from Nilfgaard to negotiate for the survival of their homeland. It will be up to the victors to divide what’s left.

The other royals offer her their condolences on her father’s death. Ciri must say the right things--the things Yen coached her to say before they stepped through the portal--because nothing seems to go horribly wrong. She’s not fully engaged in the proceedings, as they spread out the map and get down to the work of bartering for territory--how could she be? how could she care about trivialities like plots of land in a kingdom hundreds of miles away when _her father just died_?--but she, Yen, and Vesemir decided ahead of time that what mattered most was that they participated in the negotiations, that they were seen to be a strong and functioning kingdom, not that they actually _got_ anything out of it. She leaves it to Yen to speak for her, only nodding when Yen says that she “needs approval of the Wolf” and signing her name, _Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon,_ on the treaty when it’s done.

On the way out she stumbles and Lambert has to catch her. One of the Redanian envoys shoots her a curious look, but other than that no one seems to have noticed.

“Alright?” Lambert asks, voice low.

Ciri nods, not trusting herself to speak.

She wonders how she’s ever going to run a kingdom, if she can’t even walk properly. If she can’t even remember what Vesemir said this morning about their grain stores, about repairs on the south wall, about the envoy they sent to Kovir to see about a wyvern. How is she going to fulfill her destiny, become a great ruler, live up to her father’s legacy, if tripping over her own feet is enough to make her feel like she’s going to cry?

“Ciri,” Yen calls, from a few meters off.

The other kingdoms have all dispersed, off on horseback to their own camps. Yen’s standing by the smoldering trunk of a tree, xenovox in her hand. _Oh gods,_ Ciri thinks miserably, _what now?_ and then blurts, “Oh gods, what now?”

But Yen doesn’t look dour, like she’s been looking since supper last night. She looks like she does when Ciri’s been messing a spell up for months but she just did one that was sort of--almost--right. _Cautiously optimistic,_ Ciri thinks. _Almost happy_.

“Yen,” she says again, when she gets no response. “Just tell me what it is, please.”

What it is, is this: Geralt’s alive.

*

“ _Barely_ ,” Triss corrects, as they race through the halls of the Kaer. _“Barely_ alive. I think the Nilfgaardians wanted him to make it--they did something to him, sealed up his wounds. If they hadn’t he’d be dead as a doornail--“

“But they did,” Yen interrupts. “He’s alive, he’ll be alright?”

“You know I can’t make promises--“

“Triss,” Ciri says, with the sort of royal authority that the last twenty-four hours have taught her. Both sorceresses stop in their tracks to look at her. “You are the most skilled healer on the Continent. If he can be saved, you can save him. So tell me--can he be saved?”

Triss gazes at her for a moment, then says, “Yes. Yes, he can be.”

“Good.” Ciri’s heart rabbits in her chest. “Then get to saving him, please. Right now.”

Triss nods and hurries off.

Yen keeps staring at Ciri, a look in her eyes that Ciri’s never seen. Not on her, at least. She’s seen it on her father, and on Jaskier, and on Uncle Eskel once or twice, when she mastered a particularly tricky parry out in the courtyard. Pride, she thinks. Yennefer doesn’t say anything, though, just squeezes Ciri’s shoulder once and leaves her there.

Ciri takes a deep breath, turns, and pushes into her father’s rooms. Geralt isn’t there--he’s in Triss’ sickroom, where she has fast access to her potions and poultices--but she expects to find Jaskier still in bed, pale and feeble.

Instead, he’s sitting up, propped against the headboard. And Eskel is there, covered in blood and dirt, like he didn’t even stop off at the baths on his way here. Probably he didn’t. Probably he deposited Geralt in Triss’ capable hands and came here to check on his other lover, and Ciri should really leave them to it, shouldn’t she? They’ve both been through a lot, and she… she’s fine. She has grain to worry about, and wyverns.

She starts to back out of the room as quietly as she can, but they’ve seen her. Jaskier spots her first, eyes catching over Eskel’s shoulder. “Ciri,” he breathes.

He sounds… _relieved_. Like a great weight has just been lifted off his shoulders. She almost starts to feel the same thing herself, but she fights it. She can’t be relieved--she’s got a kingdom to look after, and dead to bury, and mutagens to account for, and her father is in critical condition, and…

“Cub,” Eskel says.

Ciri’s grip tightens, white-knuckled on the door handle.

Eskel stands and walks toward her, arms outstretched like he does when he knows she’s about to launch herself at him in a hug. But she doesn’t move, and he hesitates. “Ciri?” he asks. “Are you alright, cub?”

She avoids his eyes. She feels certain if she meets them she’ll cry. Instead she looks past him at Jaskier, the reason she came in here. “Jask,” she says. She tries to sound like she did in the hall, calm and collected, but to her horror her voice comes out as a teary croak. “Are you--I need to know if you’re feeling better. Please.”

She’s not sure why she says it so strangely. Jaskier, however, seems to understand, if the way his expression softens is any indication. “Oh, Ciri. I’m fine, darling, I’m alright. Please come here, will you?”

Ciri shakes her head, lips pressed together.

Jaskier gets up, still moving gingerly. “Alright, then,” he says. “I suppose I’ll have to come to you.” And he does, making his way across the room until he’s stepping past Eskel--the Witcher putting a hand on his waist for support--and standing in front of Ciri.

He reaches out and touches her face first, his palm pressed to her cheek. Then her tears spill over onto his fingertips, and he says, “Oh, _darling_ ,” and pulls her into a hug. The moment his arms are around her, all her stubborn resolve breaks. She clings to him, fingers digging in his sweaty shirt--the same shirt he was wearing when he collapsed in the great hall a day ago--her face buried in his shoulder while he shushes her and rocks her.

Or is he swaying on his feet, still too weak to be standing so soon? It doesn’t really matter. If he falls, Eskel will catch them.

“You did well,” Jaskier’s murmuring into her hair, “you did so well, darling, you kept it all together. I’m sorry you had to do that, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m supposed to,” she sobs, frustrated and embarrassed. “I’m supposed to be able to do better than that, I was a mess, I was awful, I was alone and I didn’t know what to do--“

“You did beautifully,” Jaskier assures her.

“I hated it,” she protests. “Gods, I hated it, I hated being alone.”

Jaskier pulls back to hold her face in his hands and gaze down at her. He looks a bit teary himself. “You’re not alone,” he tells her. “You’re never going to be alone.”

She knows, now, that it’s not a promise he can make, but she nods desperately anyways. She wants to be comforted. She wants to believe him.

“I’m sorry, cub,” Eskel says, sounding wrecked. “I should’ve been here.”

Ciri shakes her head. “No.” She extricates herself from Jaskier, sniffles, rubs her nose on her sleeve. “No, if you’d come back like I asked you’d never have found dad.”

Eskel doesn’t argue, but he still looks pained.

She does what he was expecting earlier--she launches into a hug. He stumbles when she hits him, not expecting it, but he still catches her. And she feels him press a kiss to the top of her head, apologizing again.

*

Geralt wakes eight days later. Ciri spends every free second she gets sitting at his bedside, staring hard at his familiar face, caught halfway between willing him awake and trying to memorize him in case this is the last time she sees her father alive.

She reminds herself each time not to hope. Not to let her guard down. He could still take a turn for the worse, still leave her here to run this kingdom by herself. Well--not quite _by herself_ , but still. She knows how dangerous hope is, how it can alleviate the weight of grief only to force you back into grief all over again, and she’s determined not to repeat the sharp pain of loss if she can avoid it. But it’s difficult not to hope, with every day that goes by that she visits and Triss says, _I can’t say if he’s getting better, but he’s certainly not getting worse._

Ciri’s not there when he comes to. She’s sitting in on a status update about the wyvern thing in the war room, with Eskel and Vesemir. Their envoy have managed to track it down, but fear that the cave where it took shelter is home to an entire flock. They’re debating via xenovox whether establishing good faith with the people of Kovir is worth the risk to their lives when Eskel suddenly straightens, like he’s heard something.

A moment later, Triss spills into the room, grinning, ecstatic with relief.

They leave Vesemir to the xenovox and race down to the sickroom. Jaskier’s sitting with Geralt, smoothing his white hair away from his face, talking softly to him with mere inches between their faces. Geralt’s holding his arm. His grip looks strong, steady.

His eyes go to the door as it opens, and to Ciri. “Cub,” he says.

Ciri chokes out a sob. She doesn’t even make it to his bedside; she goes down right in the doorway, so that Eskel has to catch her and help her move over to where Geralt can reach her, so he doesn’t end up trying to get up and tearing something. Jaskier hops up out of his chair, and Eskel deposits Ciri in it, close enough that she can grab onto her father. It’s awkward, like hugging anyone in a bed is awkward, but she clutches him tight and buries her face in his chest, and somehow he gets the leverage to pull her out of the chair and onto the bed with him, so he can get his arms properly around her.

He’s soothing his hand over her hair, murmuring to her, the same nonsense that he used to hum in the middle of the night when she was a tiny baby: _easy, easy_. Her face feels hot, and her chest hurts, and she’s sure she’s getting snot all over him, but she doesn’t care. He’s alive. He’s holding her. He’s talking to her. He’s _okay_.

“ _Dad,”_ she sobs.

“Easy, cub,” he rumbles. “Easy.”


End file.
